JMFburns

Land L,

Love, support and hugs to you. You and your child are in my thoughts and prayers.

Pathwaytofree

Lovedandlost,

I am so sorry for the pain and loss you have experienced. Addiction--in all the forms it can take-- is a horrible disease. I hope you can do what you can now for yourself to take care of yourself, your child, and move forward.

Wake up calls get the addict (in whatever addiction) to recovery, but it doesn't always keep us there. The disease is absolutely insidious. It's a beast that we can't even explain; it has to be experienced first hand to really understand.

It's true, you didn't have control over anything but taking care of yourself.

It sounds like he wanted to change with every cell of being. But sometimes even that much of willingness doesn't keep us healthy, because addiction is a mental illness.

You mention the trace of denial. What happens is, our illness chatters in our heads and says stuff like, "You can control this. You got this. Try just 1 or 2 [drinks/pills/whatever the addiction] and just stop." It's like the devil on your shoulder but much more insidious than that.

It sounds like your husband worked extremely hard on his recovery.

Often times, many of us can keep it together and succeed at everything else in life by "working hard". But when it comes to the mental illness of addiction, it's another type of challenge.

That's EXACTLY how it happens. Addiction is baffling, insidious and slow. It's like the analogy of the frog who jumps out of a pot of boiling water, but if it's in a pot of water that is slowly brought up to boiling, it is unaware. If we don't stay in self-awareness every moment of every day, the lies of the addiction voice start to creep back into our heads and we listen to them instead of having the awareness that they are just lies and are not a part of who we are.

I can completely see how this happened to you. And unfortunately while he was using, he very likely didn't have the awareness of what it was doing to you, and would likely have been devastated once he fully saw it clearly and understood it. When our minds are taken over by the addiction voice, we are so completely blocked from how our actions affect others. It really sucks. We can't see it clearly until we look at it in hindsight. It's obvious how much you cared about your husband and wanted to help him succeed in his recovery. I hope therapy continues to help you help yourself heal.

Begging and screaming do not work, no matter how much the person loves you. The disease of addiction is stronger than love of a spouse, family members, friend, love of self, etc. It's something that's difficult to explain if you yourself haven't experienced it.

I never did rehab so I can't comment on that. But I do often hear that rehab may get the drugs out of your body and get you clean, but rehab doesn't fix the mind. Or, rehab starts to work on fixing the mind, but it's not a be-all-end-all. If the person wasn't taught what to do day to day once out of rehab to not listen to the addictive thoughts, then the disease will creep right back in.

He likely stopped going to meetings not because he didn't want to stay well, but because either his addictive mind told him that he didn't need them, or he was feeling so good that his healthy mind told him that he was cured now and didn't need them. Unfortunately this is a lifelong disease and we must do what we need to do for it every day. Just like a diabetic on insulin doesn't just stop taking insulin because he feels better, it's gotta be for a lifetime unfortunately. We've got to swallow our pride and realize that.

This is exactly what happens. :-( Just because suddenly your external stuff is excellent--your marriage, career, personal life, physical health, etc.--it doesn't mean that the mental illness of addiction is cured. That's a lie the addictive voice tells us.

I am sorry this happened. I once heard a speaker call her addictive voice "a beast'' and that is exactly what it is. This is not your fault. I am so sorry for your experience.

I am so sorry that he overdosed and died. You sound just heartbroken and it's apparent how much you loved him. Please do not feel guilty and angry at yourself for not being there to save him. It wasn't your job to save him. He had to save himself.

I'm not sure if this is the right thing for me to say, so I apologize if it isn't. But the thoughts that went through my head while reading this paragraph, was I was trying to think of some sort of non negative to take out of this. And there is one. Your child! Your husband lost the fight of his brutal disease, and that is a deep loss for you. But your child lives on, and he is a part of you both. He is the gift that lives on. Honor your husband by sharing happy memories and things you loved about your husband, with your son. Your husband not only lost you, his own life, but he lost the chance to experience being a dad and watching your son grow up. No man in his right mind would "choose pills and heroin" over the life he had. I hope you see that. The disease is insidious.

Anger is part of the grief process so don't let anyone take that away from you. But I hope one day you will let the anger go and choose love instead--self love and love toward your husband.

Please don't hurt yourself more than you already are hurting, with guilt and regrets. This is not your fault. The battle a wife goes through to try to save her husband from addiction to me sounds like war. It's not your fault. You couldn't have done or said anything different. My experience matched AA's big book--I have a spiritual malady that centers in the mind, so the only thing that helped me was finding a Higher Power. No human on earth could've helped me. There was nothing you could have said or done differently to change the outcome.

That is exactly what it's like. Addiction is heart breaking and devastating to the ones it effects. Maybe you can talk with your therapist about how to channel those feelings to something useful?

I hope sharing some perspective helped. Feel free to message me privately.

Please take care of yourself. You need to work on YOU now. Your husband would want you to.

mooselips

I am so sorry for your loss.

I hope now peace will enter your life.

It's hard for us to actually live OUR life to the fullest while we have this cloud of addiction hanging over our head.

Let go of the wish I woulda.
If I only coulda....

Give yourself the love and serenity you deserve.

He's in a good place now.

Hugs to you.....

Lovedandlost

Hello Everyone,

After my last post here it took me a few weeks to be able to write again. Grief has been extremely overwhelming and it feels like it's still getting worse.

I want to thank you so much for all your kind words!! It helps me a lot to know you truly understand and I'm not alone.

I'm struggling with so many complicated feelings right now. I'll try to right about it little by little.

Thank you for being there for me!
L&L

MariahGayle

I’m so sorry for your loss & Wishing you & your child healing & peace.

Lovedandlost

These last few weeks I've been reading everyone's stories. Every night after I put my son to bed, I read and read. I can see us in so many of the posts I've read. This tragic story of addiction that seems to sooner or later either end in lifelong work to maintain sobriety or in heartbreak and death as it did for us.

I still can't accept the fact that our 11 year journey is over. The thought has crossed my mind to just get pain pills too now to numb this pain. Don't worry about me, I don’t think I will. But it seems so damn unfair that my entire life I did everything right, was the good girl, the supportive wife, only to lose everything in the end. Whatever pain my husband tried to numb could not be any more intense than what I am feeling right now. He never struggled with an addicted partner and then lost his love, his past, present and future, his family’s only source of income and had to be a single dad. And yet he was the one who used drugs. So why can’t I?

And along all this anger that I’m feeling is so much sadness. I miss him so damn much!!! Our happy times together, his humor, having a caring husband who loved me so much, what we had.

I thought about leaving him so many times but I didn’t. I stayed by his side and now I got caught in the bomb blast that destroyed my life.

I don’t know how to live on. If this was a “normal” death it would be devastating but I wouldn’t be completely empty and broken inside already from years of his drug use, never-ending lies, and destroyed hope. I was completely weakened already before his death. Just a shell of myself. I have no strength left. This now is so much worse than anything I’ve ever had to deal with. Some days I think that if I just got in a bad car accident or something like that, if fate had that plan for me, I would finally find my relief. Part of me still wants a happy life again, of course, but with no strength left to rebuild it from scratch, what kind of life will it be?

No matter what I do from here on, things will never be care-free again. I will always miss my husband, my soulmate, miss having that love that we had during our first few years, miss being half of that golden couple people always said we were (before he started using drugs), and will always wish he could see our son grow up. Every happy moment will have pain attached to it as well. I don’t want to live with pain anymore but it will always be part of my life now no matter what I do.

hopeful4

Are you in any sort of counseling? What you are experiencing is grief, and it's hard. It ebbs and flows. A counselor could really help if you don't have one already. Big hugs.

Lovedandlost

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I go to therapy once a week. It helps a bit but this “complicated grief” as it’s called is so overwhelming. I just feel so damaged now and the thought that I may never be happy again the way I once was is so draining.

Ann

I think the pain of grief lasts a long time for most people, and for people like you who have been through so much, it may be more intense. I am glad you are having counseling. It will help you and help you raise your son and just keep going.

It may be hard for you to see but one day the pain will be less, and then less again. Nothing will make that happen sooner, but knowing there are better days ahead may offer some comfort today.

Keeping you in my prayers, my heart hurts for you.

Lovedandlost

Thank you for your message, Ann.

I'm realizing more and more that one of the main reasons it's so hard for me to make any progress in my grief, is that my husband's death seems to have been completely avoidable to me.

He was an extremely high-functioning addict like I mentioned in my first post. He used sporadically on and off and his overdose death seems more like a case of bad luck than a natural progression of a disease. He was in the middle of his life, generally happy and successful. You never would have thought he was an addict. It would be easier for me to understand if he had lost a job over this, gotten in financial trouble, stolen, etc.

I feel that I should have grabbed him and shaken him and told all his friends and family about this (he always convinced me not to). Or I think why didn't I organize an intervention? I should have insisted on an inpatient program instead of outpatient.

I feel that I let him down by not helping him enough with his disease. I was the one with the functioning non-delusional brain after all. And my son could still have a father. And I could have saved myself this life-draining grief. This nightmare. I just think I could have done more and that thought makes it hard to breathe and makes me wish I was done with this life too.

Can I please ask you wonderful people to help me think straight?

Lovedandlost

Anyone, please?
Thank you!

hopeful4

Oh sweetie. No one can force anyone else to be well, or seek treatment. Even if you had, it would not have stuck. You have to want it for yourself, and be willing to do the work, every single day, forever. It's something many will not do, which is why relapse is so hard.

I would guess he was using more than you realize. Most are. What I am going to say is going to sting. Watching my children go through what they go through from their addict father, who is much the same, is tragic. It's constant chaos. It's constant fear that he will go out of control, again. It's resentment, hurt, all sorts of awful things. Above all else, it's so very sad.

While your son will have to accept his father's death, he will eventually go through that grief process and move forward. My children will watch their father spiral further and further out of control until he cannot function anymore. It will happen. I am not comparing, I am simply saying that you cannot control the past. What happened did happen. The good memories are still there. Celebrate those memories and let yourself grieve. I would say grief counseling would help you immensely. Sending you a big hug, and saying all of this gently because I know it's painful.

Freedom1990

May God hold your aching heart in his hands.

trailmix

Yes, you were the one with the functioning non-delusional brain but how do you translate that to an addict. You couldn't actually think for him (if that makes sense) and your words would always be interpreted by his addicted brain.

You didn't cause it, couldn't control it, couldn't cure it. That is the truth.

You feel like you should have grabbed him and shaken him, perhaps organized an intervention and inpatient. Thing is, in your grief, all of these things probably seem entirely reasonable but again, you are thinking of it with a non-addicted brain. You don't really know how he would have interpreted any of this. What would his reaction have really been to your telling his family and confronting him with an intervention? It might have sent him spiraling and you would now be thinking, I wish I hadn't pushed so hard (again, you were not responsible for his addiction, so that guilt would also be unwarranted).

You sound terribly depressed and I hear suicidal thoughts are lurking as well? If you are feeling suicidal please reach out for help. The devastation for your child, if nothing else, would be horrendous.

You are obviously a kind and loving person and your child is lucky to have you.

If you are having suicidal thoughts, please reach out, call 911 or

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255). Trained crisis workers are available to talk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your confidential and toll-free call goes to the nearest crisis center in the Lifeline national network.

ScaryTime

I am so sorry for your loss! My thoughts and prayers of peace are with you and your child!
Know that you did everything you were capable of. Unfortunately in the fight with addiction it is only the addicted that can make the change.
I too am married to an addict but the drug(s) of choice are alcohol and marijuana, he is sober 7 months and I fear he will relapse as well. More importantly I too saved my husband’s life after his heart stopped - he quite literally drank himself to death. He did not quit drinking after that but actually drank more. Not until two and a half years later did he quit drinking/drugging. I can empathize with what you were feeling as a result of saving his life. I too suffer from complex PTSD.
Someone said in their responses that you may have felt in control of the addiction after saving his life once and I can also relate to that.
I now know that I don’t have any control over my AH or his addiction. Please know that it was nothing you did or didn’t do. It is the nature of the addiction beast and it is a ba$tard!
My heart goes out to you, I am so sorry your husband lost the battle! 😪

Fancy7

I’m so sorry to hear .. my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family . You did everything you could . Addiction is a tough disease to over come . We are here for you .